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Nov 30 2020

# London Grip New Poetry – Winter 2020-21

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The Winter 2020 issue of LONDON GRIP NEW POETRY features:

* Kathryn de Leon * Steve Black * Chris Hardy * Stuart Handysides * Briege Duffaud
* Frederick Pollack * Ian Heffernan * Brian Docherty * R G Jodah * Maggie Freeman
* Elizabeth Smither * Jan-An Saab * Julia Duke * Jeni Curtis * Jane Simpson
* Janet Hatherley * D A Prince * Devon Miller-Duggan * Bruce Barnes
* Jim C Wilson * Gale Acuff * Merryn Williams * Norbert Hirschhorn * Rodney Wood
* Roger Caldwell * Belinda Cooke * Joan Michelson * John Grey * D S Maolalai
* Antony Johae * Sue Johns * Xan Nichols * Stuart Henson * Kerrin P Sharpe
* John Bartlett * William Doreski * Pamela Job

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors. Biographical notes on contributors can be found here

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December

A printer-friendly version of this issue can be found at
LG New Poetry Winter 2020-21

SUBMISSIONS: please send up to THREE poems plus a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or else included in the message body
Our submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October

Nicolo’ di Pietro, Episodes from the Life of St. Benedict: He mends a broken sieve, 1415-20

Editor’s notes

Our cover picture is not, as might be assumed, a Madonna & Child showing Jesus as a toddler rather than a baby. It’s a scene from the life of St Benedict which goes with a poem in this issue by Bruce Barnes. Of course, we do not mean to diminish Christmas; and we do in fact “do God” in varying degrees in poems by Devon Miller-Duggan, Jim C Wilson, Gale Acuff and Kerrin P Sharpe. We also offer a seasonal editorial poem to fit a year when – in spite of all the pressure on HM Government to “bail out” the festive season – most of us will not be following familiar patterns of celebration with our families and friends

    Trim the tree

    Award a star for good behaviour
    then find the fairy who might turn us
    into how we’d like to see ourselves
    by the reassuring glow
    of coloured lights colluding with the dark.
    Hang the holly to adorn
    the door so sprigs of prickles symbolize
    our greetings.  Set the mistletoe
    to lure someone to kiss and make us royal,
    removing spells we’re crouching under.
    Meanwhile rummage in the cupboard
    for that missing box of decorations.
    Count the cards again.  Ignore
    the nagging feeling something’s been forgotten.

From Tradesman’s Exit, Shoestring 2009

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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    Kathryn de Leon: Prediction 21 June 2020
    (after W.S. Merwin)

    The world was supposed to end last Sunday
    but I completely forgot.
    I had planned to check if the sky looked strange
    or if the sun dimmed at midday
    as it sometimes does
    in my dreams.

    My mother remembered many such predictions
    in her lifetime.
    I myself have lost count of those in my life.

    Some of us try to push and bend the world
    to fit neatly into these prophecies.
    Or we push and bend the prophecies
    to fit the world.
    Especially those of Nostradamus.

    Nostradamus.

    His huge name thuds
    like a black door slamming shut.
    How can we not believe?

    I hold a bit of my breath
    with each prediction
    wondering if this could be a correct one.
    In 1969 California was to sink into the sea
    so I should know better.

    But none of this matters
    since we will all have our own unique,
    personal end of the world.
    We are each a sealed envelope
    with an indelibly written date,
    a life-sized secret, somewhere within us:

    the anniversary of our death
    that we pass every year without knowing.

    On that day, we wake, we eat, we live.
    The sky watches us,
    patient and filled with God.
    Waiting.

    Then the day is finished,
    forgotten like a turned page.
    It rides the earth’s sad blue away from us
    but returns again and again
    never giving up.

    Until finally it stands before us,
    its God-sized hands raised
    blocking our way
    and the world ends
    without a prediction

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    ***
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    Steve Black: Tanka

    the inscription in the book
    i promised i would read
    but never did
    something
    to remember me by

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    Chris Hardy: The Wind Forgets, Always Forgets
    George Seferis

    We’ve been here
    only a few months.
    In that time a woman

    came to the door
    to say
    her husband
    was dead,

    cracked open
    at the dinner table.

    Also, a man
    in the garden
    heard his father

    was sick,
    then was told
    he’d died
    and quickly left

    though the funeral
    could never happen.

                   *

    The sun remembers
    and returns each day
    to the same places.

    But the wind,
    appearing suddenly
    when you turn a corner,

    races past,
    changing and forgetting
    all it touches.

    We open windows
    to let it renew
    our house,

    sometimes omit
    to close them
    before it throws

    a vase of flowers aside
    on its way
    to somewhere else.

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    Stuart Handysides: Ill wind
    after George Mackay Brown – Hamnavoe Market

    Like Larkin’s travelling coincidence
    the railway carriage filled up
    and no one would have spoken
    had it not been for Fothergill, who
    – after quarrelling with Karen
    dumping the insistent Daisy
    punching the foreman
    and assaulting Perkins whose van
    nearly failed to stop on the zebra crossing
    because he was answering his phone
    to Higglethwaite who demanded to know
    where the hell his pie delivery had got to –
    walked into the path of the eleven forty-seven.

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    Briege Duffaud: Widow

    That evening in the newly-silent house
    I sat among our books and ancient vinyls,
    Cohen, Dylan, Viglietti,
    Brel and Brassens, Shakespeare, Yeats,
    the lives we eavesdropped in our Paris flat,
    (Te recuerdo Amanda, la calle mojada …)
    before the children and the murdering rows,
    before your stubborn love affair
    with the glowering countryside,
    following that idiot trend
    that left our friends, our culture
    and our happiness behind.
    Mad fool, I cried, come back and tell me now
    what bastard of a dream made you betray us!

    I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
    Yeah right, sneers Harry Hotspur.
    And sure enough you didn’t heed my call.
    .

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    Frederick Pollack: Celeb

    The fire came within five miles
    of the house. It wasn’t her only house,
    she had others but was there,
    and felt a strange need to “look after” it
    till told to evacuate. (Consulting
    Ben, she cancelled appearances on
    two talk shows.) Black specks settled
    on the pool. She stared at them,
    uncertain what to do. Other layers
    formed on the roof, the decks, the tiles,
    but those could be hosed off. (For months
    thereafter, she walked around sniffing
    the house; perhaps there was a smell
    and she would have to sell.) A volunteer
    died, she learned from Twitter, stopping
    the part of the fire nearest her. After
    a week she sent a hand-written note
    (Ben composed it) and money
    to the family. She never felt
    the same about the pool
    although still photoed floating in it, legs
    extended, drink in its holder, her latest
    beside her. A B actor,
    he wanted to hold onto her (though Ben
    disapproved), and as luck would have it found
    a way: his next role
    was as a doomed heroic fireman.

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***

    Ian Heffernan: Metaphysical Nocturne
    Mario Reviglione

    The moon is what we notice first –
    A bright blurred disc in darkened sky.
    We seem to see it through thin ice.
    Along the painting’s left-hand side
    Blank-windowed buildings stretch away.
    Below a plain wide terrace spreads.
    Towards its rightmost edge a girl
    Looks up, or out across the sea.

    I won’t apologise for this:
    I mean to pry into her mind.
    Her back is turned, but even so
    It’s clear to me – I can’t say why –
    That what she’s contemplating there
    Is not existence but a wound;
    A wrong she’s suffered in the past
    For which she can’t obtain redress.

    The details are opaque, of course –
    Abuse in childhood? Talent blocked?
    The theft of what she almost loved,
    Or what she almost failed to love?
    Fatidical, perhaps she sees
    The guilty and the innocent
    Walk hand in hand and laugh, a life
    That closes round oblivion.

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***

    Brian Docherty: Half-Life
    (after David Reeve, Abandoned Huts, Dungeness)

    Everything here is abandoned, even Dungeness A
    Power Station, but the residual energy lives on.

    And England’s only desert will live on
    while the rest of Kent, Sussex, Suffolk

    and who knows what else, crumbles away
    and any memories the soil and chalk hold

    go to feed the fishes, or amuse the mermaids;
    they won’t tell what went on in these huts,

    people’s little lives, the pitiful half-life
    of human hearts fading away so soon.

    What happens on shore stays on shore
    might be one way they look at our world

    until we venture out to sea, or walk by
    their rocks under the new moon, and then

    they may take an interest, might even let
    the Selkies come ashore in their other guise.

    But even they if could, the mermaids would not
    come near these huts, they feel the black energy

    in their hearts, on their skin, know the big grey
    block running its heavy water into their water

    could mean the end of everything, an abandoned
    world, with no berth for them on the last starship.

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***

    R.G. Jodah: Jilted

    You can douse those torches, Hymen
    and stop your singing.  My sister,
    your mother, has come to her senses.
    The wedding is off.

    I'd say it's because of the coffins,
    wouldn't you?

    All those years of plighting, nephew
    (such uncommon fidelity)
    and with what does he pitch up today?
    Him

    who would have us believe
    he was cast from that same mould
    and by Kresilas himself.
    Look at him

    standing alone at the altar,
    a dower of coffins,
    is that a statesman you see,
    a leader bestriding this age,
    a colossus?  Or is he no more
    than a dribble of lost wax?
    Strategos, my arse.

    Nephew, I tell you, if Clio, your mother,
    my sister, were blindfolded, left
    in a cave on a new moon midnight,
    still she would know Archytas
    from that son of Acacallis.
    Unlike some.

    Yes, send the chorus home,
    those maggots have stripped the flesh
    from that tune, they're just scraping
    bone now.  Murderers,
    the lot of them.

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***

    Maggie Freeman: Man in buttercup field: lockdown

    He is all angles and sharp lines
    drawn across the verticals of the long grass

    he has cast his bike down
    the handlebars crooked
    front wheel twisted at eighty degrees

    like his legs which, bent at the knees
    to support him where he sits on the ground
    make wide-apart vees

    points of his elbows propped on his thighs
    white tee-shirt, black shorts, forty perhaps
    phone clenched to his ear

    ‘What can I do?’ he is shouting
    alone in the field among the blond grass heads
    the gold of the tall-stalked buttercups

    sweetness of the soft breeze:
    ‘What the fuck else can I do?’

    Maggie Freeman: Opening the shower gel

    Sidle my thumb under the plastic lid
    	and flick, there’s that familiar tautness
    		across the bones in the back of my hand
    			which says it’s a modern-life gesture

    not one that’s part of the hunter-gatherer
    	way my body’s evolved, like
    		walking and running or standing
    			in the sun under a warm waterfall

    in this sunless room water’s falling
    	on my half-asleep shoulders and I’m pouring
    		a gold viscous pool in the palm of my hand
    			transmuting it on my skin to a white froth

    redolent of lavender - lavandula angustifolia
    	I’m awash in the scent of, which reminds me
    		of the massive lavender
    			in the huge pot by her front door

    and the text she sent late last night to say
    	her consultant can’t be precise about how long
    		she’s got - till the end of the summer
    			maybe, and I’m glad the weather forecast

    is promising, and she can sit in her garden
    	in the sun, which she feels does her bones good.
    		In a clay pot by my front door
    			I have planted three little lavenders

    Miss Dawnderry, Gorgeous and Ashdown Forest
    	which grow bushier each day, and send up
    		long thin stems that sway in the breeze
    			holding new buds toward the light.

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    Elizabeth Smither: Warehouse perfume

    What is Vanderbilt by Gloria Vanderbilt
    doing on this crass display? And
    Elizabeth Taylor’s green-glass Gardenia?

    The concrete floors, the towering stacks
    the tired assistants walking slow
    in uniforms of red and black.

    Don’t they know, don’t they care
    that here are Gloria and Elizabeth
    out in glorious limousines and furs

    and that they are being thrown out
    as if from attics on Fifth Avenue
    as cheap as a tip for a bellboy?

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    Jan-An Saab: In Black & White

    Beds were made small: never meant for two,
    faces were masked to camouflage the truth.
    No one brave enough to reveal what is real.

    He was convinced, with colours out of sight,
    in black & white, relationships would be easy
    to control and divorces will not go through.

    Affairs would take place as usual for the elite.
    He kept repeating, having the right partner,
    house and car are a bliss, fewer choices for

    us who are not blessed, and only minor effort
    required of him, always the chosen one:
    who picks holes when he is colour blind?

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    Julia Duke: Modigliani's Women

    They're having no truck with obesity,
    no penchant for butties and buns,
    shunning burger bars, chocolate, and sugary drinks;
    they wear their good habits like nuns.

    They pound through the pool before breakfast,
    completing their customary lengths,
    spend hours at the gym, emerging so trim
    that they turn all their weakness to strength.

    Admiring each other's sleek outlines,
    in leggings and leotards dressed,
    they smooth down their minimal bulges
    and cover the rest with their vests.

    In the long afternoons they spend sitting
    with admirable calm and repose
    they nibble at fruit and at lettuce
    whilst the artist remodels their toes.

    Chosen for litheness and vigour,
    they take up their arduous pose
    and the artist himself, Amadeo,
    paints the girl who is wearing a rose.

    The hours they put in in the mornings
    Once the pains in their muscles abate
    Are worth all the strain and the struggle
    To the caryatid bearing the weight.

    As he sculpts and he smooths and he brushes
    his women are coming to light
    imbued with the artist's own vision
    of what makes a good woman look right.

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    Jeni Curtis: postcards to my mother
    1
    the sun shines in St Petersburg
    the scent of lilac wanders
    down Nevskyi Prospekt   mocks the roar
    of Harley Davidsons   the cygnets
    in Swan Lake are so young
    their feathers should be brown
    2.
    it is green on Kizhi island
    you’d love the wild flowers
    fields of yellow prove
    to be dandelions   glory
    in humility   church bells ring
    and men sing a capella
    in the summer cathedral   gulls
    perch on domes
    I buy a small horse
    3.
    what do tourists really see
    I see palaces pansies everyday
    people churches markets gold
    icons lacquered dolls blue sky
    blue domes old wooden dachas
    rivers lakes locks hydro-electric stations
    and trees trees trees
    4.
    St Basil’s looks as exotic
    as in my jigsaw   in Red Square,
    a book fair   I can look
    at the pictures   but
    I can’t read a word

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    Jane Simpson: Summer sound colour

    at the Peacock Fountain
    my arm
    in a sling
    is a concertina
    squeezed tight
    elbow to hip
    six whole weeks

    no music escapes
    its conjoined chambers
    as I sit at the side
    watch the jig
    all ribbons and bells
    maypole and maze
    a haze of colour
    tap to the fiddle
    leading the rail
    startle to the clap
    of sticks
    caught and thrown

    look down to where
    the pillow was
    let air rush in
    ease elbow out
    let sag
    let summer
    sing

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    Janet Hatherley: Stroke is what we do to cats

    Cross-legged on the carpet
    the paramedic sits in front of me

    listens to my half-formed answers,
    my sentences that tail

    into nothing.
    Words stumble and stick.

    Questions, more questions.
    It’s fine, isn’t it, to crave peace?

    I turn to my daughter,
    will her to answer for me.

    Mostly, I’m relieved
    we make it to the ambulance in the dark

    without the neighbours seeing.
    My blood pressure is off the scale,

    hits the fairground bell
    like a man with a sledgehammer.

    The paramedic gives up on the machine,
    hand-pumps it the old-fashioned way.

    My daughter sees the looks that fleet
    between the paramedics.

    I settle in their hands,
    accept we are going to UCH, the best,

    they say, in case anything happens.
    They don’t put on the siren.

    Perhaps my blood pressure begins to flutter down.
    In A&E my hand goes numb.

    The scan shows I’m having a stroke,
    picks out evidence of others.

    My children think I’m dying.
    Then it’s over.
    They watch me,
    fear dementia.

    Two days later, the occupational therapist
    follows my slow walk along the corridor,

    hands me a clipboard at Costas.
    If a small hot chocolate is £2.20

    how much change from £5?
    I cross out answer after answer.

    Back home,
    fatigue dogs my steps.

    I take afternoon naps fully clothed,
    count out tablets into compartments.

    My brain rewires in slow-time.
    I think about getting a cat.

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    D A Prince: Making the changes

    Smiles and goodbyes all round, a kiss and promises
    pencilled on the future and fingers crossed!
    but then he’s pulled the door near-shut, to show
    (she’s out of ear-shot) how he manages
    the steps, how the new handrail’s fitted in
    exactly  -  look!  -  rounded, rubbed down, the oak
    angled for her, her height, brick-fast and solid,
    two black-lacquered brackets, three bolts each,
    matched to the lower step, the broader,
    tiles cemented clean, the paving swept of gravel
    … one stone, that’s all it takes …  -  the rail cut short,
    precisely, so the car door meets it flush,
    no gap, and he can line them up, perfect each time
    … that clipped cotoneaster guides the tyres,
    so all she has to do …   and each week
    how her step is shortening, struggles with itself,
    but the handrail’s fine, he’d thought about it,
    all those hours, nights, knowing there’d be a way
    … and her chair goes in the back …  a man in the village
    with his drill, hardly any dust, right first time
    and no trouble, mostly, doesn’t want to fall
    … who would?…   and how he always gets her there
    on time, all those appointments …  still what can you do,
    no question, being his own answer.

    So we admire his handrail, unambiguous,
    low sun warming the wood, glints of gold
    along the grain, just for this moment
    everything all right.

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    Devon Miller-Duggan: Thoughts & Prayers Go Out

    That crap about everything happening for a reason:
    He was dying because his wife wasn’t praying hard enough—
    wildfire infection and some lady from their church told his wife—

    I’m supposed to think about how many times per day is enough and pray?
    Disease/disaster/friend-whose-mother’s-cousin’s kid has a frightful thing—
    That means I remember so-and-so has such-and-such tumor.
    Other people’s suffering. I mean, I care. I mean to care. “I care” means?
    Means “connection? Crap, I’m so tired of being asked to think about—
    so tired of feeling like any being’s survival depends on my,
    on my incompetent remembering.

    What does it mean about the whole my mind/your body connection
    when it’s triangulated with the un-geographical geography of Heaven?
    The whole my mind/my body thing is only
    some network of nerves or veins they recently found—
    what this other thing means, God knows when we’ll know, except we know,
    except we don’t.

    Thank God it isn’t me? It will be. Or worse.
    There’s so much worse that’d break my voice.
    But when it’s me, and all your minds scritch-bouncing over my body’s
    plaints and threats—

    I thought I saw Jesus once, plain—
    he wasn’t altogether pleased at being asked for healing while busy
    healing. Even a limitlessness gets worn
    skin-thin by so many thoughts and prayers, you understand?

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***

    Bruce Barnes: For St Benedict
    After the fresco cycle in the Badia Fiorentina

    You didn’t do much, as far as miracles go:
    shattering a wine glass, retrieving that scythe flung
    in a river by  a frustrated labourer ,
    then repairing your nurse’s sieve, I think –
    (that second scene in the fresco cycle
    has you praying, as if to get purchase,
    while a guidebook secures your handiwork,
    for the admiring crowd by the  church door )
     – but I don’t  recognise  that flying whatsit
    of wood, fixed or patched up, as a sieve.
    Where are the holes that make it whole,
    where are the handles to hold on to,
    while what you must lose slips away?
    But you’ll do, as any handyman might,
    take the broken sieve in hand, and cuddling it ,
    mend and fix its vulnerability to you.

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***

    Jim C Wilson: Jakob

    He will
    not eat thin soup
    or buy a shirt that has
    wide stripes; he wears long sleeves, against
    the chill.

    Jim C Wilson: Returning

    Lazarus, death-clotted, pale,
    and blinking gummed-up clouded eyes,
    shuffles out to meet his saviour,
    and greet his taken aback relations.

    The sun bears down on his wispy scalp.
    Does he want some bread, a cup of wine?
    He doesn't know; he'll have to think.
    The life grows pressing on his mind.

    'It's a miracle,' onlookers say,
    as swiftly they replan their plans.
    And Lazarus stares into their hearts,
    draws his shroud close to his body.

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***

    Gale Acuff: Beans

    When I die I guess I'll know it I say
    to my Sunday School teacher but what good
    will it do me then and she answers Well,
    Gale, leave that for God to reveal to you
    so I say Yes ma'am but think she's full of
    beans, nobody knows what's on the other
    side and maybe not even those who live
    there and that's where everybody's headed
    sooner or later, I'm ten years old so
    later works for me and my teacher's old,
    25, so I tell her (and I choke
    on my words just like in my comic books, when
    folks aren't gasping) and say I'll miss you, ma'am,
    when you're gone and she says Yes, so will I.

    Gale Acuff: Relativity

    I guess I won't mind being dead, not that
    I can do anything about it save
    try to wind up in Heaven and not Hell
    is what I told my Sunday School teacher,
    who started to cry and then reached for me
    but I pulled away and then she fell a
    -cross the desk so I reached for her to raise
    her up but she took both my hands so that
    means that she reached me after, touched me
    after I reached for her and I think that's
    the kind of miracle we ought to read
    in the Bible, it makes a lot more sense
    than parting the Red Sea though not as much
    as saving that woman from being stoned.

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***

    Merryn Williams: Antarctica

    The penguins thought no harm.  They toddled up,
    and clucked, and gazed at these strange bearded men.
    The strangers were amused.
    But it was necessary to kill the penguins.

    This woman thought no harm.
    She gladly let him come too close, but he
    had wider aims, his core was cold.  He swung
    his axe.  He left her bleeding on the ice.

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***

    Norbert Hirschhorn: A Disquisition On Time
    (With help from Stephen Hawking)

    ‘Time’ is only what a clock reads: your wristwatch, the steady oscillations of a

    caesium molecule (nine billion times equals one second). Tick  tock  tick.
    .
    	Einstein joked that Time is what keeps two bodies from occupying the exact same

    space at once. No joke: Even when I’m inside you, we’re still separate.
    .
    	The faster I move, the slower my clock, so I’d better keep moving to stay young.

    The higher I go, the faster my clock, so I’d better keep my head down.
    .
    	Time slows near a substantial body: as when I’m within your orbit, my dearest.
    .
    	Time’s arrow flies forward as disorder rises (‘entropy’). My decay is what I endure

     as Time.
    .
    	Or, Time is just one lonely day after another.

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***

    Rodney Wood: Holding A River In My Head
    “And plagues drive people crazy. You might call them mass-disinhibiting events.”,

    Andrew Sullivan ( A Plague Is an Apocalypse but It Can Bring a New World, New York Magazine 21/7/20)

    Wednesday. There’s nothing in the diary.
    No letter or emoji, no location or time,
    for a Zoom video conference.

    Today there’s only this house
    & this garden where faeries live.
    I find myself worried that birds

    have not been eating the suet balls
    I left out for them in a feeder.
    Maybe I need to move it from the lawn.

    Trousers hang from the washing line.
    Already my mind’s buzzing
    with questions but it’s not yet lunchtime:

    1) are my trousers dry yet?
    2) who moved the bird feeder?
    3) who’s stolen the mower?

    I don’t mean to but I think violently.
    My body is inflamed
    & sweat runs off me like a tide leaving the shore.

    Arteries are branches that are muddy & soft.
    Something's not right here
    as my skin opens without a puncture.

    I want to be a fish, no something else
    that can at least dial 111
    & talk to God in the language of silence.

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***

    Roger Caldwell: Yellow Bird

    Yesterday I saw a yellow bird
    hang upside down
    from a small white cloud –
    I guessed that it was trying
    to tell me something.

    Yesterday came other signs too.
    I heard a voice speak from a tree
    though what it said –
    the words were indistinct –
    was lost in rustling of leaves.

    The sun shone with a strange new light,
    and when I raised my eyes to it
    a giant yellow eye stared back.

    Yesterday so many marvels,
    portents of great things to come –
    I lay half-awake all night,
    thinking about them.

    And yet today the sky is dark,
    rain hour by hour
    patters down on dustbin-lids,
    and sodden yellow feathers everywhere
    clog up the overflowing gutters.

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***

    Belinda Cooke: Translations from Marina Tsvetaeva’s After Russia

    Clouds

    1.

    All ploughed up --
    these battling explosive skies,
    these skies paved out
    with battles...

    Migrations of herds,
    horses whipped up by
    the lash, beneath the
    shining widowed moon,

    2.

    But isn’t that Phaedra’s
    shawl beneath the sky?  Phaedra
    soaring up in this marathon
    flight of the racing heavens?

    Or even Herodias, grasping
    a forelock, while a tambourine,
    soars into these racing heavens
    to the sounds of Jericho’s trumpet.

     3

    No, the great wave rises and
    falls -- the prophet speaks true:
    a parting of the waves
    as seas divide in two,

    a procession of beards
    and manes along the Red sea?
    No, all wrong -- it is Judith
    holding up the head of Holofernes.

    Words and Meanings

    You don’t think about me ever,
    unless as some clingy woman!
    You think about me as little as
    wires stretching out in the distance.

    You don’t complain of me, that it’s a pity...
    sweeter than everyone, they say
    but think of me at least as
    a pedal, a pedal prolonging the pain....

    2.

    Palm to palm.
    Why were we born?
    Please don’t pity me:
    No it’s just to drag out the pain...

    Distance protracted by wires....
    Distance and pain, the same palm
    keeping itself apart for how long?
    Distance and pain are one and the same.

    Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) is now considered one of the greatest twentieth century Russian poets.

    She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution and the Moscow famine that followed. She left

    Russia in 1922 living in increasing poverty In Berlin, Prague and Paris, before returning to Moscow in 1939.

    Her husband Sergei Efron and her daughter Ariadna were arrested on espionage charges in 1941. Efron

    was executed. and Alya imprisoned. Desperately isolated in the new Soviet regimeand in extreme depression,

    Tsvetaeva committed suicide in 1941 survived only by her son, who died in a penal battalion shortly after.

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***

    Joan Michelson: Wirewalker

    At dawn he lifts his balance pole, takes
    a step to test the wire strung in secret,
    and starts to cross between the Twin Towers.

    A bird with strange red eyes flies close
    above his head and circles. Uncertain,
    the acrobat continues.  As he planned,

    he crosses eight times between the Towers,
    pausing once take a rest. He sits astride,

Philippe Petit 7 August 1974

    his legs stretched out, then lies face up

    along the length and sees the bird that’s hovering
    close. It’s not an eagle like the bird
    who fed daily on the liver of Prometheus.

    And the wire walker is not a demi-god.
    But it makes him pause to think about his hubris
    and he wonders if he’s over-stepped the human.

    But he feels protected by the Towers
    as if they’re high air creatures and his brothers;
    and the bird too could be a brother. His passage

    between the Towers might be a trespass and lead
    to his arrest but for here and now, his home
    is the high air. He lingers before continuing,

    stops only when the police are threatening
    to lift him off. He stops and bows. He bows
    four ways, up to the Twin Towers, North and South,

    to the bird and to helicopter that’s come too close;
    right, and left, and down to the crowd that’s watching.
    As if he’s understood, the red-eyed bird circles

    one last time and flies up, up. Years later
    the wirewalker will see the Twin Towers fall.
    He will feel them die; and he will mourn.

    But when the news breaks and repeating TV
    footage shows the ending, although in Paris,
    he’s right there with the office workers

    stepping out from the high tower windows.
    Reaching out he takes their hands
    so they can fly together into higher air.

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***

    John Grey: That Sniper

    That's him up at the third floor window of the old abandoned
                                                                                                piano factory building.
    He's armed with an automatic weapon and is firing shot after shot
                                                                                                at the street below.
    But no one's out walking because nobody lives here.
    He can spray the sidewalk all he wants but all he'll hit are
                                                                                                cracked cement or weeds.
    Shells bounce off the ruptured tar like popping corn.
    Can't break windows of the stores because they're already smashed.
    And what's the fun in hitting the targets of the dilapidated Roxy.
    There hasn't been a movie there since Dirty Harry was at the Police Academy.
    He may as well fire into the air but don't expect to hit a bird.
    Or turn the damn thing on himself.
    He can blast away at nothing, a target all his own.

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***

    D S Maolalai: The mime

    we were staying
    at his house. this was
    Croatia. 2015. and during the war,
    he told us,
    he had been a sergeant
    and a captain then
    afterward; now
    he made our beds
    while we visited museums
    and the beach. that night

    his wife cooked stew
    which his daughter served in red bowls,
    and he got maudlin
    drunk on spirits,
    showed us his helmet,
    showed us his gun.
    and he showed us medals,
    and a knife
    he had taken from someone's body,
    and pictures of his friends – “dead”.

    his English was not
    very good and he told us
    that for a while
    he'd been a sniper. said
    it had been
    very difficult, miming
    through splintered language
    an explanation;

    the eyes, yes – because you had to see
    so often
    men’s eyes.

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***

    Antony Johae: Poppies

    The pinned poppy has a centre like a black hole; it sucks soldiers in.
    The rest is red, redolent of blood, risk, cross, flame, passion,
    men cut down, blown up, caught in Helmand’s traps, snipers’ sights,
    boxed, brought back, and buried in Britannia’s dark November.
    The pinned poppy pricks a finger, startles the wearer into issues,
    inquiry, the wherewithal of war, its spur and whereafters.
    The reason’s not in heroes – service, sacrifice, duty, country, God,
    but in the pod: Papaver fields on Afghanistan’s rich hills,
    heroin harvest, cartel-trafficked, sinews of war, purchase of arms:
    field piece, mortar, missile; munition, mine, timer,
    war’s panoply, forged from God’s plant.

    Monet painted them flaming away into a far field
    a woman picking one in the drowsy afternoon.
    In Flanders too they grew in soil touched by war
    bodies bloodied, splayed in death
    gas gasp, mask, last rasp, limbs lost, rotting,
    rats, ditch run red, men retched in throe,
    wounded to tents, agony – from poppy – opium-appeased,
    relief, amputation, release or – after armistice –
    day addiction, dread dreams: stained in stench,
    trench, drenched – bullet, bursts, barbed wire,
    discharge, detonation, flash, flesh, death . . .
    ‘Nurse! Sister! Love! Wife! My medicine!’

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***

    Sue Johns: Winning

    They should wash their  mouths  out with soap and water,  your leaders,
    stepping  onto  podiums, recommending  distance,  vodka,  disinfectant.
    Their  lecterns are rolled out  to support the  economy.  You must  wrap
    your team scarves tight around your mouths, go into the stands, remove
    the poor and aged identifying your  favourite players from the  numbers
    on their body  bags.To hell with Wimbledon, cricket, The Olympics, there
    is only one game the world is watching, the rules are mine  and they are
    unpredictable. Before each match you foolishly touch  and retouch your
    faces to  soothe, de-stress.  You  would be  better off   sitting down and
    colouring me in with your  children –  deathly red, mysterious  violet, a
    soft and hopeful green. I  am an invisible  athlete, a simple grey  at best.
    So much running, running, running, people who have never run in their
    lives are running for their lives, in circles – go home applaud from your
    windows.  Nothing  is  winning  in the Wet  Market, the  cages hold  no
    hierarchy, fear is a  strangled anthem as  the dogs  hang glistening  like
    medals. Hand, wing,  claw I pass like a baton.  Nature  is still under  the
    knife as you struggle for breath. When you are allowed out to play you
    won’t remember  how to, you’ll pick and dig at anything that will  draw
    blood:scabbed knees, old sport injuries, the graves of relatives. By then
    I will be  holed-up with   something soft,  helping to lick its wounds and
    resting before we map out the training for the winter season.

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***

    Xan Nichols: Mediterranean
    (after Gabriel Levin after Rimbaud)

    There’s a space shyly hidden among
    rocks where the tamed sun gathers its strength.
    A stream lingers, at last, on the sand.
    It’s a pool of warmth beneath cold cliffs.

    A young man, calm, all muscles loose,
    floats just beyond the surf’s easy break,
    rocked by the homing waves. His submerged
    hands are pale and altered by water.

    He’s thrown his head back, eyes closed, to feel
    the sun on his vulnerable throat.
    The waves hush him, running up the beach.

    There’s the big silence of abandoned
    places. He doesn’t move. Behind him
    a little flotilla of life jackets.

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    Stuart Henson: 2020

    Bad year—so many ways.
    Deceit. Confusion. Tolling death.
    Yet much grown gold: the hedges
    quick, fat haws, matt sloes,
    gatekeepers, midges, fruit in swarms.
    The house is steeped and cidery—
    Blenheim and Bramley burnishing.
    Things spoil; things shine;
    sly months file on… You’d need
    good eyes to see it through, good luck,
    and some philosophy at home with doubt.
    Big ask, that capability. Burden enough.

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    Kerrin P Sharpe: the ways of rain

    the open grave of the window cleaner
    his coffin apple-bobbing the sides
    his wreath of roses their polystyrene boat
    the mourners unsure whether to look or leave
    the Priest He leads me beside the still waters
    the mourners unsure whether to smile
    the mourners remembering the words
    of the window cleaner I’ve one eye
    against the sky the window cleaner forgiven
    for taking the ways of rain in vain
    forgiven for all those dirty dinners
    he fed the sea the ways of rain deep
    deep as a Saviour’s love giving
    the window cleaner a way to row home

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***

    John Bartlett: Go Firmly
    after The God Abandons Antony by C. P. Cavafy

    your funeral was not meant to be
    		an entertainment
    when I saw your coffin live-streaming
    		down the aisle
    I wanted to change the channel
    I wanted to change what you’d meant
    		to me
    of course there are tears for
    		what is lost
    but why weep for what has never been ?
    		-that’s merely petulance
    there were letters left forgotten
    		-calls unanswered
    our lives barely nudging against each other
    		then moving on
    after the service I walked on the beach
    seaweed towered above me like
    		uninhabitable high-rise
    and I was small again
    so go now firmly to the window
    and weep your paltry tears
    		of farewell

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    William Doreski: Dark Passage

    Toting a trapped mouse to the woods
    at night, my headlamp burning.
    When I open the trap the mouse
    strolls out, pauses to paw smears
    of peanut butter from its chops,
    then strolls leisurely away.

    The night is rolling big cigars
    and smoking them fiendishly.
    Stars pop like pimples. Gases
    form nebulae larger than all
    the life that has ever pulsated.

    One fat little field mouse
    embodies this energy as well
    as the force of gravity does.
    I’m glad I didn’t kill it,
    although its gritty life suggests
    a casual lack of conscience.

    The fan-shaped light I cast
    as I walk back to the house
    slashes through a deadweight of dark
    that otherwise would oppress
    and cause me to lose my bearings.

    The ground underfoot retains
    its illusion of solidity, but
    trees have vaporized, leaving
    only scars and stains on a wall.
    I can’t imagine a bat sailing
    through this cast-iron dimension.

    When I step into the breezeway,
    a fully lit space, I snuff
    the headlamp and become human
    again, the hole I drilled in the dark
    quickly healing behind me.

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***

    Pamela Job: A Walk Through Time

    A short way along the track into the hills
    and I have taken on chequered shade
    like a new skin. Sun dazzles me through
    branches, wind tears leaves from them,
    part of the inevitable seasonal roughness here.

    I glance down at my hand, its dappling tells me
    I am on my way to becoming translucent.
    Soon I will see the cogs and springs, all the workings
    inside the case of me. To my left, a red squirrel skips
    around in the walnut tree, a nut in its mouth.

    I hear a rhythmic sawing, the shell cracks
    as it gnaws a way in, fluffed tail erect behind
    tufted ears. Sun-struck, it sits in fractured light.
    It watches me watching it, chatters to itself, up
    it skitters into foliage, teeth clamping another nut..

    I feel I have moved beyond skin into another
    dimension, and, as I write this years later,
    I’m there again, in that dappled afternoon;
    a living thing untamed, free, and me, close
    as kin, and both, on that day, unafraid.

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***

Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Reed, Poet Lore, Chiron Review, Cardiff Review, Poem, Adirondack review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, and many other journals in eleven countries. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.

Bruce Barnes is Bradford based, but London born, (within the sound of Bow Bells), and is happy to be of both places. His work has appeared in Northern based magazines such as Pennine Platform, and Strix, and he is a past winner of the Torriano Poetry Competition.

John Bartlett is the author of three novels, short stories, non-fiction and three poetry collections. He was the winner of the 2020 Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize and lives on the southern coast of Australia. beyondtheestuary.com

Steve Black can be found sweeping various streets within spitting distance of London. He has been published every now and then.

Roger Caldwell’s latest poetry collection is Smoking Opium in Moscow (Shoestring Press 2020). He also writes on philosophy and is a regular contributor to Philosophy Now.

Belinda Cooke’s most recent translations are Kulager by Ilias Jansugurov (Kazakh National Translation Agency, 2018); Forms of Exile: Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (The High Window Press, 2019); (et al) Contemporary Kazakh Poetry (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2019). Her own poetry reflects her Irish background, while exploring ambiguities within relationships as in Stem (the High Window Press, 2019) and her forthcoming Days of the Shorthanded Shovelists from Salmon Poetry.

Jeni Curtis is a Christchurch writer who has had short stories and poetry published in various publications including takah?, NZPS anthologies 2014 to 2019, Atlanta Review, Shot Glass Journal, Landfall, The London Grip, and the Poetry NZ Yearbook. Her poem “come autumn” was nominated for the Pushkart prize. She is secretary of the Canterbury Poets Collective, and chair and co-editor of poetry for takahoe.

Kathryn de Leon is from Los Angeles, California but has been living in England for ten years. She is a teacher and lived in Japan for six years teaching English to Japanese university students. Her poems have appeared in several magazines in the US including Calliope, Aaduna, and Black Fox, and in the UK, in The Blue Nib,The Cabinet of Heed, morphrog 21, Hypnopomp, Poetry Wivenhoe Poems, and The High Window where she was the Featured American Poet.

Brian Docherty is the Beach Bard of St. Leonards. His new collection, Blue To The Edge, a sequence of memorial poems for his wife, Rosemary, is forthcoming.

William Doreski has published three critical studies and several collections of poetry. His work has appeared in many print and online journals. He has taught at Emerson College, Goddard College, Boston University, and Keene State College. His most recent book is Stirring the Soup. williamdoreski.blogspot.com

Briege Duffaud is Northern Irish but has spent most of her life in France and England. She worked as a freelance journalist, has published two novels and a collection of short stories. She has been writing poetry for the past two years and has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, French Literary Review, Acumen and Orbis.

Julia Duke is a nature writer and poet who has found her inspiration living in England, Wales and the Netherlands. She has written a regular literary column for the Hague OnLine and published poems in various magazines and anthologies, including Fifth Elephant (Newtown poets anthology) and the Suffolk Poetry Society magazine Twelve Rivers.

Maggie Freeman has had poems published in The North, Stand and Acumen as well as previously in London Grip. Her three historical novels have recently been republished as ebooks by Lume Books. She lives in East London.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Soundings East, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest book, Leaves On Pages is available through Amazon.

Stuart Handysides is fast forgetting former lives in general practice and medical editing. His poems have appeared in anthologies as well as London Grip New Poetry, The North, Pennine Platform, Poetry Salzburg Review, Presence, and South magazines, and been shortlisted in several competitions. He has organised the Ware Poets competition for several years.

Chris Hardy has been published widely in magazines (Rialto, North, Stand, Acumen and many others), and websites (London Grip, ink sweat and tears, One Hand Clapping ..) Some of his poems have won prizes. His fourth collection was the band published by Indigo Dreams. He is in the band LiTTLe MACHiNe which sets famous poems to music and performs them.

Janet Hatherley is a London teacher with poems published in several magazines, including The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, Stand. Commended in Barnet’s Poetry Competition and Indigo Dreams Collection Competition, 2019, she was published in Dempsey & Windle’s anthology, What the moon was told. Work is forthcoming in Brittle Star.

Ian Heffernan was born just outside London, where he still lives. He studied at UCL and SOAS and works with the homeless. His poetry has been published recently in The High Window, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Cha, Antiphon, South Bank Poetry, London Grip, Under the Radar, FourXFour, The Moth and elsewhere.

a Post Card to, a collaboration between Stuart Henson and John Greening is published this month by Red Squirrel Press. stuarthenson.co.uk

Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero,” and proud to follow in the tradition of physician-poets. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has published six collections, the most recent a bilingual Arabic-English co-translation with Syrian physician-poet Fouad M. Fouad of the latter’s poems, Once Upon a Time in Aleppo (Hippocrates Press). See his website, www.bertzpoet.com

This year Pam Job was awarded a Fourth Prize in the Kent and Sussex Poetry Competition, was Commended in the Charroux Literary Festival Poetry Competition, has been published in Poetry in the Plague Year ( The Poetry Kit), and in Carl Griffin’s collaborative book length poem, Arrival at Elsewhere (Against the Grain), 80% of sales of which go to NHS Charities Together.

R.G. Jodah lives in London enjoying the silence. His work has recently appeared in: PORT (Dunlin Press), Dawntreader, Ink, Sweat & Tears and The Poetry Kit.

Covid-19 allowing, Antony Johae divides his time between Lebanon and the UK. He came out with Poems of the East (Gipping Press); in 2019, After-Images: Homage to Éric Rohmer (Poetry Salzburg); and in 2020, Ex-Changes (The High Window). “Poppies” comes from Home Poems (in progress).

Sue Johns originates from Cornwall where she started performing as a punk poet. She has published two pamphlets and two full collections, the most recent Hush (Morgan’s Eye Press 2011) and Rented, Poems on Prostitution and Dependency (Palewell Press, 2018). She is studying for an MA in Writing Poetry.

D S Maolalai has been nominated seven times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden (Encircle Press, 2016) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds (Turas Press, 2019)

Joan Michelson’s recent publication include The Family Kitchen; 2018, The Finishing Line Press, KY, USA, Landing Stage, 2017, SPM Sentinel Books, UK and Bloomvale Home, 2016, Original Plus chapbooks, UK

Devon Miller-Duggan has published poems in Margie, The Antioch Review, Massachusetts Review, and Spillway. She teaches at the University of Delaware. Her books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall (Tres Chicas Books, 2008), Alphabet Year, (Wipf & Stock, 2017), The Slow Salute, (Lithic Press Chapbook Competition Winner, 2018).

Xan Nichols was born and raised in the Republic of Ireland of Scottish parents. He taught English in Europe and Asia and currently works as a teaching assistant in an English Comprehensive school. He believes passionately in political and social engagement, in attempts to understand, without anger or hatred.

Frederick Pollack is author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness (Story Line Press; the former to be reissued by Red Hen Press), and two collections, A Poverty Of Words (Prolific Press, 2015) and Landscape With Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). He has many other poems in print and online journals.

D A Prince lives in Leicestershire and London. Her second full-length collection (Common Ground, HappenStance, 2014) won the East Midlands Book Award 2015. A pamphlet, Bookmarks, also from HappenStance, was published in 2018. She also reviews poetry for London Grip, among other magazines.

Jan-An Saab is a trilingual Fine Arts graduate, with 2 children who has worked at Embassies, studying Poetry after work and has pursued further studies in Sciences, pre-requisites for Cranial Osteopathy, since working at a Health Clinic. Her 1st poetry collection is published online and she reads at venues like TheTroubadour and at churches

Kerrin P Sharpe has published four collections of poetry (all with Victoria University Press). Kerrin has also had her poems published in a wide range of journals both in New Zealand and overseas including Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet Press UK) and Poetry (USA).

Jane Simpson is a poet, historian and writer of liturgy based in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her poems have most recently appeared in London Grip, Poetry New Zealand, takah? and Meniscus. She has two collections. Her entry in the NZ Poetry Society’s 2020 International Poetry Competition won third prize. ‘The Farewelling of a Home’, a liturgy, has recently been published in the Australian Journal of Liturgy.

Elizabeth Smither’s latest collection of poems, ‘Night Horse’ won the Ockham Book Award for poetry in 2018. A new collection of short stories, ‘The Piano Girls’ will be published in 2021.

Merryn Williams lives in Oxford. The Fragile Bridge: New and Selected Poems was published by Shoestring Press in 2019.

Jim C Wison’s writing has been widely published for nearly 40 years. Covid-19 brought to a halt the Poetry in Practice classes he ran since 1994. His most recent poetry collection is Come Close and Listen (Greenwich Exchange). More information

Rodney Wood worked in London and Guildford before retiring. His poems have appeared recently in Atrium, The High Window, The Journal, Orbis, Magma (where he was Selected Poet in the deaf issue) and Envoi. He jointly runs a monthly open mic at Write Out Loud Woking. His debut pamphlet, Dante Called You Beatrice , appeared in 2017. You can find more information about Rodney and his work at rodneywoodpoet.wordpress.com

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